As blended learning has become prevalent in higher education, particularly in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, there remains a lack of empirical research focusing on perspectives and experiences of students in under-resourced and underrepresented contexts. This research examines EFL students’ perceptions of blended learning in a Chinese local college, where technological integration and instructional innovation often face contextual challenges. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study surveyed 230 undergraduate students and conducted in-depth interviews with 16 participants to explore their attitudes, readiness, and competence as blended learning users, as well as their perceptions of instructional design, learning technologies, and teacher feedback in blended EFL courses. The findings reveal that while students generally had favorable views of blended learning, they also encountered significant challenges including heavy workloads, weak self-regulation, technological barriers, and limited theoretical knowledge of blended learning. The research highlights the importance of instructional support, teacher training, infrastructure development, and pedagogical balance to optimize the implementation of blended learning in EFL contexts. Implications are offered for teachers, administrators, and policymakers aiming to enhance blended learning effectiveness, particularly in local and resource-constrained college settings.

As a key driver in the global language services, translation technology has emerged as a central element of modern translation education. Consequently, training in translation technology has become an indispensable part of translation programs at the tertiary level to develop students’ technological competence. Nevertheless, there remains a marked disparity between the rising technological complexity of the translation market and the training provided in undergraduate translation technology courses, as perceived by trainers. To fill the gap, this qualitative study adopted Kelly’s (2005) translator training curricular design model as its theoretical framework and employed semi-structured interviews with 12 trainers from higher education institutions in Shaanxi Province, China, to examine their perceptions of the design and delivery of undergraduate translation technology courses. The results revealed that trainers reported a range of issues, including the imbalanced integration of technological competences, inconsistent content coverage, generally insufficient resources, and limited teaching and assessment methods. In particular, they made recommendations for addressing the most pressing challenges, namely, inadequate staff provision and the isolation of the course from the broader translation curricula. It is hoped that the findings of the study will shed light on the challenges faced by translation technology trainers and contribute to enhancing the design and delivery of translation technology courses in similar contexts.

Over the past two decades, Margaret Atwood has consistently defined her work as speculative fiction, pointing out the realistic foundation of her works, rather than imagining the future technology. Yet critics remain divided on how her works represent “reality” through imagination. Previous studies have primarily focused on speculative elements at the content and narrative levels, along with references to reality. This paper holds that her works are significantly different from the writing of traditional literature in terms of content and formal characteristics, especially in the cognitive and thinking levels such as speculative subjects, speculative narrative strategies and the use of cognitive modal words, but they are rooted in reality and reflect a speculative realism feature. The paper attempts to interpret Atwood's speculative novels—including The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, and Oryx and Crake—from the perspective of speculative realism. It aims to reveal the reality from the cognitive perspective presented by the author and characters, and analyze the artistic charm of Atwood's speculative fiction.

A passionate and outspoken advocate of female assertiveness, Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid writes from her personal observations of the injustices of colonial subjugation and patriarchy. An overall reading of her fiction shows that most of her books defend oppressed and devalued women against the historical atrocities enforced by both colonial and androcentric communities. Most significantly, Kincaid’s oeuvre holds colonization liable for entrenching patriarchy in Caribbean culture. Annie John is no exception since its eponymous character, rebellious and defiant Annie, vehemently rejects the passivity and victimization assigned to Caribbean women by both white colonialists and the patriarchal society where she lives. Since its publication in a book form in the New Yorker in 1985, Annie John is often analyzed from a postcolonial perspective. However, an in-depth reading of the text shows that it intertwines gender relations, women's sustainability, and unfettered sexuality, along with colonial and postcolonial realities for non-white, non-Western women.

This study aims to thoroughly examine the role of local language in the development of tourism based on local wisdom in South Sulawesi. Using a qualitative approach supported by quantitative data from questionnaires distributed to tourism actors, local communities, stakeholders, and tourists, this study highlights the importance of using local terms such as "tabe", "siri na pacce", and "sipakatau" in building authentic tourism experiences. The research results show that local language is not only a communication tool but also a means of preserving cultural values and collective identity that strengthens social relationships in the tourism realm. The high support for training in using the local language and the desire to integrate it into tourism promotion indicate great potential in revitalizing the local language through the tourism sector. These findings reinforce the sociopragmatic theoretical view of the social meaning of language while providing practical contributions to formulating culture-based tourism policy strategies.

In assessment-driven educational systems, particularly within Saudi EFL contexts, instructors face increasing pressure to align their teaching with high-stakes testing frameworks. While individual teacher attributes such as language aptitude, metalinguistic awareness, self-efficacy, and anxiety have been studied in isolation, their interactive effects on Teaching for Assessment (TFA) practices remain underexplored. This study aimed to investigate how these cognitive and affective factors predict and mediate TFA engagement among university EFL instructors in Saudi Arabia. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was employed using five validated instruments to measure language aptitude, metalinguistic awareness, language anxiety, teacher self-efficacy, and TFA practices. A purposive sample of 247 Saudi university EFL instructors participated. Hierarchical regression, mediation (PROCESS Model 4), and moderated mediation (Models 14 and 58) analyses were conducted using SPSS and Hayes' PROCESS Macro. Self-efficacy was the strongest positive predictor of TFA practices, followed by metalinguistic awareness. Language anxiety negatively influenced TFA, while language aptitude showed only an indirect effect via metalinguistic awareness. Moderation analysis revealed that anxiety weakened the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and TFA, while self-efficacy enhanced the entire indirect pathway from aptitude to TFA. These findings validate a moderated mediation model and highlight complex cognitive-affective dynamics influencing assessment behavior. The study confirms that cognitive ability alone is insufficient to foster assessment-aligned teaching. Rather, the interplay of self-efficacy, metalinguistic awareness, and anxiety significantly shapes TFA practices. These insights underscore the need for professional development programs that enhance both cognitive skills and emotional readiness among EFL instructors.

Information packaging constructions are complex and controversial structures. Sometimes there is no clear-cut difference between these types of constructions where they overlap. Almost all previous studies address such constructions syntactically, ignoring the study of these constructions stylistically. The present study tries to be an attempt to investigate and analyze T.S. Eliot’s (1922) poem “The Waste Land” stylistically in terms of information packaging constructions. It seeks to explore how these non-canonical constructions are employed for achieving some stylistic devices of deviation and phonological rhyme. The study analyzes the lines of this poem in which information packaging constructions occur, determining their types. In addition, the study specifies the types of deviation and the phonological rhyme and how they are created through the use of such constructions. For achieving these objectives, the study develops an eclectic model for analyzing a poem like this that integrates two approaches. The first one is Huddleston and Pullum's (2002) model of information packaging constructions, and the second one is Short's (1996) model of stylistic deviation and phonological rhyme. The study concludes that the poet employs six types of such constructions. They are preposing, postposing, inversion, existential, left and right dislocation, and passive. Preposing is the most employed type of these constructions. It is mostly employed for its important task in linking the meaning of the lines of the poem. Such constructions create and maintain stylistic deviation and phonological rhyme for poetic purposes.

This research explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of diplomatic translation, specifically highlighting its potential as either a supportive tool for human translators or a threat to the quality of translation. As AI technology continues to evolve, its integration into translation practices raises important questions about its efficiency in the quality of diplomatic communication. This study aims to evaluate how AI tools assist human translators and the challenges they may pose, particularly in maintaining linguistic and contextual accuracy. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of AI-generated translations using Gemini, this research highlights the strengths and weaknesses of AI in translating diplomatic texts. The findings revealed that while AI tools can enhance efficiency, they often struggle with clarity and contextual accuracy in diplomatic communications, as these tools often mistranslate specific terminology and fail to maintain the nuanced tone crucial in diplomacy.

This study presents cross-sectional data on phrasal and inter-phrasal agreement in second language (L2) learners of Arabic. Fifteen learners at different proficiency levels participated. The study examined the order of emergence of phrasal agreement (represented by noun-adjective agreement) and inter-phrasal agreement (represented by subject-verb agreement). It also looked into whether complex form-function relations delayed the emergence of plural masculine and feminine forms compared to other forms with one-to-one form-function relations. The results showed that phrasal agreement emerged far ahead of inter-phrasal agreement, and complexity in form-function relation led to a delay in the emergence of the plural masculine and feminine forms in phrasal agreement. When learners could not supply target language forms of adjectives and verbs, the default form was employed.

This study examines how cinematic dialogue discursively constructs social alienation and identity transformation in Joker (2019). While previous analyses have emphasized the film’s psychological or cinematic dimensions, this paper foregrounds the linguistic mechanisms through which Arthur Fleck’s marginalization is enacted. Adopting a qualitative discourse-stylistic design, five high-stakes authority encounters between Arthur and institutional figures (his therapist, manager, Thomas Wayne, and Murray Franklin) were transcribed and analyzed through speech act theory, politeness/impoliteness frameworks, and stylistic markers such as rhetorical questioning and evaluative lexis. The findings reveal that Arthur is consistently subjected to delegitimizing speech acts, face-threatening evaluations, and ridicule, which reproduce stigma and institutional power asymmetries. Over time, his discourse shifts from tentative self-reflective questioning to accusatory rhetorical reframing and confrontational assertions, dramatizing his discursive reconstitution as the Joker. These results extend impoliteness theory by showing how hostile humor in mediated interactions operates as discursive violence, while contributing to film stylistics by demonstrating the central role of dialogue in representing mental health stigma and social exclusion.